World Trust

Intersectional conversations of gender and race are not new, and certainly not unique to this generation.The Way Homeand Light in the Shadowsare two World Trust films that dive deep into the heart of rooted experiences that elicit difficult conversations on racism, misogyny, and misogynoir.

Last Summer, we offered a series of free film clipsabout racism and its impact on our society. To this day we hear how deeply the clips supported meaningful and nuanced conversations.

To continue to support your conversations, today we launch the Summer of #JusticeandHealingNOW! In the coming weeks we'll be offering free film clips on JUSTICE and HEALING,right to your inbox each week.

The clips are from our upcoming film (coming in 2017) and explore:

How do you define the meaning of justice?

Why is addressing trauma such an important component of justice?

How do our current structures create disproportionate outcomes for people, young people in particular of color as well as the poor and disenfranchised?

Why and how do our current structures need to be changed if we want to ensure that children are treated well?

The world is crying out for healing - healing of inequitable actions and of unfair, unjust systems. And, equally important, the world is crying out for the deep internal healingthat allows us to more effectively come together to educate, organize and work towards a world that works for everyone. In community we can heal, support and renew while sharing the analytical tools and facts that allow us to be effective.

At World Trust, for the last 20 plus years, we've found our films to be effective pathways to building community and capacities for working towards racial equity. Watching films and clips allows individuals to simultaneously self-reflect and learn while offering a common touchstone for conversations with others to discuss our deepest needs, hopes and strategies for creating a more just world.

This summer we hope these film clips from our upcoming film will move, inspire, and invite you to engage in conversations with others - family members, friends, colleagues and community members. Feel free to share the clips as widely as you wish. We also will be #ConnectingGoodWork by featuring some like-minded organizations that work for an end to cycles of pain and suffering via our Facebook page. We can't wait to connect with you in the coming weeks!

Tuesday evening of last week, June 15, my nephew called to ask my opinion on the Rachel Dolezal story. We had an interesting conversation.
Everyone was talking about the phenomenon of a white woman passing for black. The gist of my nephew's particular question was this:
what about all the good work she did? Do we have to throw that all out because she was pretending to be something she is not?

The story of Baltimore is connected to a long-standing struggle for access and equality, which is as old as this nation’s history. This is a story of resistance to injustice, brutality, economic exploitation and domination. One cannot truly grasp the meaning of Baltimore without considering it within the context of a long history of uprisings and protests folded into what is just the latest expression of outrage. We cannot really understand the response of this latest uprising without looking at the meta-narrative of oppression. As long as there are people who are routinely excluded and marginalized there will be disquiet.

I remember Daddy saying that I have to stay off the block. It’s 1964 and I am 17 years old.He’s afraid I’ll get hurt on 125th Street in Harlem. There have been six days of unrest after an African American teenager is shot and killed by an NYPD lieutenant.

Folks are, as Fannie Lou Hammer said long ago, “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Shakti Butler and World Trust were able to play an important role in the education component of UMASS's response to a racist incident on campus. Shakti also supported stakeholders as they prepared to write a strategic plan for their diversity initiative. Shelley Perdomo, with the Center for Multicultural Advancement, met Butler at the 2014 National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE) in May and had already invited her to host diversity activities at UMASS. "Shakti is so gifted at inviting people to conversation," Perdomo says. "She allows them to be courageous, to ask authentic questions and be more self-reflective."

Unlike some campuses, which may try to push racism to the back burner, hoping against hope that things will go smoothly, Vice Chancellor Enku Gelaye of UMASS Amherst is more pragmatic: "This is our world --- racist incidents will happen. If we're not building relationships consistently, when something happens you have a mish-mash approach that is not authentic."

Since 2005, Alexander Hines, the
Director of Inclusion and Diversity at Winona State University, has increased the number of students of color at the school from 144 to 680. The University has surpassed its own goal of attracting 2-3 percent more black students to the campus each year, and with students themselves pushing for greater diversity efforts, it seems likely that this trend will continue.